The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 116

Page Seven Nellie Revell Lost Use of Her Back, But Has More Than Usual Amount of Backbone By Leon Blumenfeld HERE is a woman with two names. And she isn't a Lucy Stoner either. Her Christian name is Nellie Revell; her other name, the one by which she is most commonly made reference to, is "the world's greatest optimist" Not a paying title, financially speaking, but a distinction unique nevertheless. When an invalid in the hospital, while she was hoverine on the border line of death, Miss Revell em I 1 fc' i Fix (W I World's Champion Optimist Comes Through Smiling After Uncounted Operations on Her Spine Miss Revell has had an exceedingly strange career. Her ancestors were mostly circus people and newspaper men.

She herself was brought up on a circus lot, on none other than the one which belonged to P. T. Barnum. And Mr. Barnum was her first boss.

At a very early age she realized that her talents were confined entirely to writing and exploiting. Although she had many opportunities to perform, she followed the art of keyboard pounding. In a way that brings moisture to the Xellie Ret ell ployed not pills or pestles or sundries from the medicine chest, but merely a thing called will power and her never- failing faith in God. To add to the bargain she wrote in the sick room a seventy-thousand-word book, which was written literally "right off the chest." Incidentally, that is the title the book bears. A woman past fifty, pessimists would have doomed her to pass the remainder of her life a helpless invalid.

A practitioner, in an attempt to heal her, injured her spine. Previously, when she was well, she earned her living by being a member of the Fourth Estate-a newspaper woman and a press agent on the side. She devoted endless time devising publicity stunts for others, always endeavoring to get press comment for her employer. As an invalid she discovered that there is such a thing as gratitude in the world; that there do exist kindliness and love, and out of these Miss Revell sought hope. Then there dawned the day of victory.

Through some magical method of her own she transformed her endurance power into triumph. Nellie Revell recovered. As a newspaper woman M.iss Revell worked on a number of journals, situated from New York to San Francisco. She has left worlds of fine thinking in that boundless well of daily "copy." It has been said that she never failed to "cover" an assignment, no matter how small the story. She had a "nose for news," as they say in the newspaper offices.

As a press agent she is reputed to have put over every show she undertook to advertise. And that's saying a whole lot "Though the sun goes down it will rise again tomorrow. And life is not over yet." This has been the constant thought of this remarkable woman. With her has been the conviction that today is only tomorrow's yesterday aiyl that the tomorrows will not be like the todays. To put it in her own words, here is Miss Revell's philosophy of life: "I believe in believing.

I have faith in faiih. I may be indifferent to creeds, cults and isms, but I am sure I know just where to place the credit-God is the never failing Healer who does not make promises with reservations, with whom many of the seekers after new things have never tried to communicate." Her absence from Broadway for four long years had made Nellie homesick, for it was on this very street that she had earned her daily bread. No modern picture could paint the humanness of the scene not so long ago when the wonder woman was conveyed back to the "Great White Way." That was indeed a memorable day for her, one that she will never forget Jestingly, Miss Revell remarked that she had had so many operations she had lost track of them. "And it was wonderful the way my friends stuck to me. Always there were visitors and letters and telegrams and Towers.

They helped to bring me back to my own Broadmay." In the last year of her convalescence she wrote her much beloved book. Hundreds of letters from cripples even where made Nellie a model of hope and she said her greatest happiness is in the encouragement they received from her recovery. eyes of the listener Miss Revell relates her story: "When I found myself on my back, physically help-. less and financially broke, it was no pleasant thing to contemplate. It didn't help much to know that both conditions had been caused by my own foolhardiness.

Overworked on one hand and trying to "beat Wall Street on the other were my two weaknesses. I wanted to holler and holler bard. And then P. T. came to my mind.

I began to recall how I had been brought up on the lot, my playmates who were the clowns and the huge animals. There were a few other children belonging to that circus. One of them I remember was a little fellow named Jimmie. "I didn't like this fellow Jimmie and I never failed to show my dislike. If.

I remember correctly I was about six, maybe less. Jimmie was a little younger. My favorite pastime was to find mud puddles, lure Jimmie over to them, trip him up and push him over. Then I would run. It took a very long time but finally a glimmer of sense percolated into Jimmie's dull brain.

One day he tried the same, trick and I fell. And there, all covered- with mud and dirt, I cried loud and long. It happened that P. T. was passing by at that moment.

He asked what all the shoutin' was and I told him. He looked quizzically at me and said: "'Did you push Jimmie into a mud puddle? "I nodded my head. "'Nellie, said P. T-, apropos of nothing. know these shell games that follow our show.

They're dirty gambling, aren't they Everybody knows it. Yet everybody takes a shot at it. Occasionally some fellow comes along with an idea that he can beat the game. He tries a long time and loses all his money. And then when he's out, just because he thought he could beat the other fellow, you 'understand, he runs to the police and cries that he's been skinned.

You know what we call a feller like that? A feller who can't take his medicine. Now you're crying because 'you got just what's coming to you. Most of Nellia Revell's education was secured in the public schools of South Bend, Indiana. Previous to this she spent a brief period as a circus performer. After pursuing her studies Nellie never went back to the sawdust trail and the big tents, as did her mother before her.

At sixteen she secured a job as reporter on her father's newspaper in Springfield, Illinois. Denver and Chicago were the big Western cities here she followed up her work by obtaining positions on various sheets. Finally she arrived in New York, prepared to conquer that city too. "I would rather be a newspaper woman than be in the White House," Miss Revell remarked, and by her vocal and physical expressions we can easily U. to believe it.

A few months ago she had another book published. This one was entitled, "Fightin" Through." The volume is a sequel to her first and it tells what happened to the author at the end of the three years, the toils and struggles of fighting her way back to life. Some of the advice she gives in thebjok is h.ckneycd enough. Not exactly hackneyed, but it has been tried and proven with time. She says: "The best lessons are taught by misfortune, but theie is no such thing as free tuition in the university of life." Another one is: "The yes" man is the jellyfish of humanity." Not few were the tributes tht the omaa author received from well-known critics.

One writer said that she had brought up some real deep-sea stuff. "If this girl, lying on her back foi years," he said, "a down and outer, tortured by pain, tempted by sainthood, 4cpcuie with debt and lack of money, could smash a Imei over the plate and come back, anybody else can if he makes up his mind. Her book is a kind of talisman of tenacity, a monument to noble scrapping. The fighting personality is the one that wins." Is not this enough to proclaim the ho iu modern times has served as a better inspiration to others than Nellie Revell? Who ever made such a heroic contc-back as she? To practically all people the advent of Christmas a special significance. To Nellie Revell.

too, it is Christmas all right. It brings that gladdening spirit of Yulctide along uith it, but it has a greater meaning to her. She is improved over that Christmas four years ago. hen she threw, her surgeons. ho cre alays threatening her with operations, into hysterics by pinning on the post of her bed a piece of paper, saying: "Nit to be opened before Christmas." The doctors fc.f Kad Nellie's desire by not uncovering the plaster cast till the holiday came around.

might end this article by attaching a moral to it But, instead. I am taking the liberty of quoting Irvin S. Cobb, one of America's greatest authors and humorists. In Miss Revell's -Right Off the Chest" Mr. Cobb wrote the following introduction: "I claim Nellie Revell deserves welt of her country.

Her father before her was one of 'Grant's Dandxs." a gallant volunteer soldier of the Civil War. The Spanish War widowed her her husband, wearing a captain" uniform, died in the service down in Cuba. "It was that same father of hers, himself a sitwces-ful editor and publisher, mho, on his deathbed, wrote her a farewell letter, which did not reach her until hi spir had passed. From the other side of the grave he said to her "'Nellie, you've been a good daughter, a good wife, a good mother and you're a damned gooj r.e sj-jf.